Follow UsSanju Samson finally found his mojo in international cricket in 2024 after being in and out of the Indian team over the last 10 years. The success largely comes after he grabbed the opportunity to open the batting after Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli’s T20I retirement.
Post the 2024 ICC T20 World Cup, Samson has scored 436 runs in 12 innings scoring at a strike rate of 180. He became the first player in T20Is to smash three centuries in a calendar and the first Indian to hit back-to-back hundreds in T20Is.
This new approach towards batting certainly will help Samson break some records in the upcoming five-match T20I series against England, which will start on January 22 (Wednesday).
Here are the records that Sanju Samson might aim towards breaking in the 5-match T20I series against England
Sanju Samson is coming to this series on the back of a spectacular four-match T20I series against South Africa in November. He smashed 216 runs in four innings with two centuries. It was the fifth most runs scored by an Indian batter in a bilateral T20I series.
In the same series, Tilak Verma smashed 280 runs in four innings creating the record of the most runs for an Indian in a bilateral series.
With five T20Is available and since Samson is going to open the batting, he will certainly have a chance to become the first Indian to score 300+ runs in a bilateral series. The matches are being played in Rajkot, Mumbai, Chennai, and others, which have recently been considered batting paradises.
Sanju Samson has seen massive success in T20Is post-2024 ICC T20 World Cup. Until July 2024, Samson had scored just 374 runs in playing 281, striking at 133. Since July 2024, he has scored 436 runs at a strike rate of 181, adding up to 810 runs in 522 balls heading into the England T20I series.
In the England T20I series, if he scores 190 runs in 81 balls, he will be the second-fastest to reach 1000 runs in terms of balls taken. Indian captain Suryakumar Yadav has the all-time record of fastest to 1,000 T20I runs the landmark in just 573 deliveries.
If Samson manages to achieve this, he will surpass Glenn Maxwell, who currently stands second with 604 balls, in completing 1,000 T20I runs.
One of Sanju Samson's biggest improvements in 2024 has been his six-hitting ability. Since July 2024, he has smashed 31 sixes in 11 innings, the most after UAE’s Muhammad Waseem, who has hammered 35 sixes in this time period.
Samson smashed 19 sixes in the South Africa T20I series, the second most for an Indian after Tilak Varma’s 20 sixes in the same series.
As mentioned earlier, since the matches are being played on batting-friendly pitches like Mumbai, Rajkot and Chennai, Samson can aim towards hammering 25+ sixes across the five T20Is and break Finn Allen's record of most sixes in a series - a feat he achieved against Pakistan in 2024.